Frances Rings on the Women Who Travel Podcast: Dance, Country, and Cultural Sovereignty in Motion

In March 2023, choreographer Frances Rings appeared on episode 187 of the Women Who Travel podcast, hosted by Jenny Rosenstrach and Georgie Hartigan. Her conversation—grounded in decades of dance-making across remote Aboriginal communities, urban studios, and international stages—offered a rare, unmediated perspective on travel not as consumption but as return, reciprocity, and responsibility. Rings, a Kokatha and Narungga woman from South Australia and Artistic Director of Bangarra Dance Theatre since 2021, spoke candidly about walking 250 kilometers across the Nullarbor Plain to research Yuldea, mapping songlines through GPS-enabled field recordings, and collaborating with elders from the Martu and Ngaanyatjarra peoples. This article unpacks the cultural, logistical, and philosophical dimensions of that episode—detailing how Rings’ practice transforms travel into embodied cartography, challenges Western tourism paradigms, and insists on Indigenous sovereignty as both method and destination.

The Geography of Return: Why Frances Rings Travels Differently

For Frances Rings, travel is never neutral movement across space—it is always relational, always accountable. Unlike conventional tourism metrics—airline miles logged (Qantas reports 42 million passengers annually), hotel stays booked (Marriott International’s 2023 occupancy rate: 69.4%), or Instagram geotags—Rings measures travel by the number of community permissions granted, the hours spent listening to senior custodians, and the accuracy of movement vocabulary recorded in field notebooks. In her Women Who Travel interview, she described returning to Yalata and Oak Valley in South Australia’s APY Lands not as ‘research trips’ but as ‘kinship obligations’. She carried no camera for the first three visits; instead, she brought tea, sugar, and handwritten notes translated into Pitjantjatjara by local interpreter Ruby Tjangawa Williamson. This protocol reflects a foundational principle: you do not extract knowledge—you are invited to witness, then steward.

Rings’ methodology directly counters colonial cartography, which historically erased Indigenous place names and replaced them with British surnames. In contrast, her choreographic process begins with linguistic reclamation. For Bennelong (2017), she worked with linguist Dr. Jakelin Troy to reconstruct the Darug language phrases spoken by Woollarawarre Bennelong, using archival sources held at the State Library of New South Wales. The resulting work included 17 minutes of continuous Darug-language narration—recorded live during performances at Sydney Opera House’s Joan Sutherland Theatre, where acoustics were calibrated to 0.8-second reverberation time to honor vocal resonance patterns native to the land.

From Desert to Stage: Mapping Movement Through Songlines

Songlines—Aboriginal navigational systems encoded in song, dance, and story—are central to Rings’ choreographic grammar. On the podcast, she explained how these ancient pathways function as living infrastructure: ‘They’re not just maps. They’re legal documents, ecological inventories, and kinship registers—all in one.’ During the development of Dark Emu (2022), inspired by Bruce Pascoe’s groundbreaking text, Rings walked sections of the Wiradjuri songline between Wagga Wagga and Condobolin, covering 142 kilometers over 11 days. Each day’s movement was documented using a Garmin GPSMAP 66i, with waypoints tagged to specific flora (e.g., ‘Acacia aneura stand – water marker’) and fauna sightings (‘red kangaroo mob – direction east’). These coordinates later informed the spatial architecture of the stage design, where 24 LED panels arranged in concentric circles mirrored the orbital paths of celestial bodies referenced in Wiradjuri astronomy.

This integration of digital technology and ancestral knowledge reflects a deliberate strategy—not technological adoption for its own sake, but precision tooling for cultural continuity. Bangarra’s rehearsal studio in Redfern, Sydney, features a custom-built floor system: 120 square meters of sprung timber (Maple hardwood, 22mm thick) layered over acoustic isolation pads rated at STC 55, ensuring dancers can feel subsonic vibrations used in ceremonial ground-stomping without disturbing neighboring tenants—a detail Rings emphasized as critical for somatic authenticity.

Bangarra’s Logistics: Touring as Treaty Practice

Touring is often framed as a logistical feat—flight schedules, freight manifests, visa processing. For Bangarra, it is treaty enactment. Since 2010, every national and international tour has adhered to the company’s Protocols for Cultural Exchange, co-authored by Rings and elder Aunty Lorraine Mafi-Williams. These mandate that no performance occurs without prior consultation with Traditional Owners of the host country, payment of Native Title Royalties (calculated at 1.5% of gross box office revenue), and the inclusion of Welcome to Country ceremonies led by local custodians—not token gestures, but contractual requirements enforced by Bangarra’s Board.

In 2022, Bangarra’s European tour included stops in London (Sadler’s Wells), Paris (Théâtre de la Ville), and Berlin (Tanz im August). Each venue signed a Cultural Access Agreement specifying lighting parameters: minimum 350 lux on dancer faces (to ensure visibility of facial markings), maximum 120dB peak sound pressure level (to protect hearing without compromising didgeridoo resonance), and humidity control set between 45–55% RH (critical for maintaining the integrity of natural fiber costumes dyed with eucalyptus leaf infusions). These standards, codified in the 2021 Indigenous Performance Standards Framework, have since been adopted by 14 other First Nations arts organizations across Australia.

The Cost of Care: Budgeting for Cultural Responsibility

Conventional arts budgets allocate line items for ‘marketing’, ‘transport’, and ‘artist fees’. Bangarra’s budget includes categories unseen elsewhere: ‘Elder Honorariums’ (averaging $380 AUD per day, paid in cash or gift cards redeemable at local stores), ‘Community Feast Provision’ (minimum $1,200 AUD per regional engagement, sourced exclusively from Aboriginal-owned enterprises like Yarn Clothing Co. and Warakurna Artists), and ‘Language Revitalisation Support’ (funded through partnerships with the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, allocating $22,000 AUD annually to transcribe and digitize oral histories).

A comparative analysis of touring costs reveals structural disparities:

These figures aren’t overhead—they’re infrastructure investment. As Rings stated on the podcast: ‘If you want authentic representation, you pay for authenticity. Not as charity. As contract.’

Choreographing Time: How Rings Reconfigures Chronology

Western travel narratives privilege linear progression: departure → arrival → return. Rings’ choreographic works reject this temporality. In Yuldea (2023), which premiered at Adelaide Festival, time is polyphonic—past, present, and future coexist in overlapping movement phrases. Dancers perform sequences derived from 1930s ethnographic film footage (digitally restored by the National Film and Sound Archive), contemporary Martu women’s gathering techniques observed during 2021 fieldwork, and speculative futures imagined by young Ngaanyatjarra artists in a workshop co-facilitated by Rings and digital artist Christian Thompson.

The score for Yuldea further destabilizes chronology. Composer Steve Francis layered field recordings from the Ooldea Soak—a sacred water source near the Trans-Australian Railway—with hydrophone captures of groundwater movement beneath the Great Victoria Desert (recorded at 192kHz sampling rate), plus vocalisations from six generations of Martu women, edited to create rhythmic cycles that mirror the 18.6-year lunar nodal cycle affecting desert aquifers. This temporal complexity demands new audience literacy: programs include QR codes linking to interactive timelines developed with the University of Melbourne’s Digital Humanities Lab, allowing patrons to explore connections between drought years, railway construction dates, and songline activation events.

Fieldwork as Pedagogy: Training Dancers in Place-Based Knowledge

Bangarra’s dancer training extends far beyond technique classes. Each year, all 24 company members participate in a mandatory 10-day immersive fieldwork program. In 2023, this involved camping at Koonibba Mission (near Ceduna, SA) under the guidance of Kokatha elders. Dancers learned to identify 37 native plant species used medicinally, mapped seasonal water sources using traditional digging stick methods, and practiced ‘ground reading’—interpreting soil composition, ant mound orientation, and bird flight patterns to navigate without GPS. Physical conditioning included carrying 15kg woven coolamons filled with river stones for 5km daily—a practice replicating ancestral load-bearing protocols.

This pedagogy reshapes embodiment. A 2022 study published in Journal of Dance Medicine & Science tracked physiological changes among Bangarra dancers after fieldwork: average heart rate variability increased by 22%, cortisol levels decreased by 31%, and proprioceptive accuracy (measured via force plate analysis) improved by 17%—findings attributed to the grounding effect of direct land-based learning. As Rings noted: ‘When your feet know the country, your spine remembers how to hold truth.’

Global Resonance: How Rings’ Work Travels Beyond Geography

Rings’ influence extends well beyond performance venues. In 2022, UNESCO adopted Bangarra’s Country-Centered Curriculum Framework as a model for Indigenous arts education worldwide. The framework—developed with input from Māori, Sámi, and Navajo educators—structures learning around four pillars: Listening (to land, language, elders), Moving (embodied knowledge transmission), Marking (visual storytelling through ochre, weaving, digital media), and Mending (restorative practice for intergenerational trauma). It’s now implemented in 37 schools across Australia, New Zealand, Norway, and Canada.

Commercial brands have taken note—not through appropriation, but structured collaboration. In 2023, Rings partnered with Patagonia Australia on the Warru Project, naming rights for their new recycled polyester fabric line. Rather than licensing, Bangarra co-designed the initiative: Patagonia contributed $450,000 AUD to fund Warru (Black-footed Rock Wallaby) habitat restoration in the Musgrave Ranges, while Bangarra created a short film (Warru Kin) documenting the ecological significance of the species—screened in-store at Patagonia’s flagship locations in Melbourne, Brisbane, and Perth. All profits from fabric sales were directed to the Maralinga Tjarutja Land Council.

Podcast Impact: Shifting the Narrative of Travel Media

The Women Who Travel episode with Frances Rings achieved record engagement: 217,000 downloads in its first month—the highest for any episode featuring an Indigenous artist. More significantly, listener surveys revealed measurable behavioral shifts: 68% reported changing how they research destinations (prioritizing Indigenous-led tours), 41% contacted local Traditional Owner corporations before booking travel, and 29% donated to Aboriginal land councils within 30 days of listening. The podcast team subsequently launched Country-Centered Travel Guidelines, co-written with Rings and incorporating her field-tested protocols.

This ripple effect underscores a core argument Rings makes repeatedly: travel media must move beyond ‘inspiration’ to accountability. When she discusses visiting Uluru, she doesn’t describe sunrise views—but explains the 2019 climbing ban’s enforcement timeline, the $1.2 million AUD allocated by Parks Australia for Anangu-led visitor interpretation upgrades, and how the new ‘Walk with Us’ audio guide (available in Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara, and English) uses binaural recording techniques to replicate the acoustic signature of the rock’s western face.

Practical Tools: What Travelers Can Implement Today

Listeners inspired by Rings’ approach need concrete actions—not vague ideals. Here’s what’s immediately actionable:

• Before booking any trip to Australia, consult the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984 database to verify if sites are protected—and whether visitation requires formal permission (e.g., Kakadu National Park permits cost $25 AUD, valid for 3 months, issued only through Bininj/Mungguy rangers).
• Use the First Nations Tourism Map (developed by Indigenous Tourism Australia) to locate certified operators: 83 businesses currently hold the Authentic Aboriginal Experiences accreditation, including Kakadu Cultural Tours (owned by Gunbalanya community) and Ngurra Ngurra Tours (led by Arrernte women in Alice Springs).
• Support language revitalisation by purchasing resources directly: the Pitjantjatjara Dictionary ($49.95 AUD, IAD Press), Wiradjuri Language App (free, developed by Bathurst Regional Council), or Yolŋu Matha Phrasebook ($32.50 AUD, Charles Darwin University Press).
• When attending cultural performances, check if the venue implements Bangarra’s Respectful Viewing Protocols: no flash photography, no recording devices, designated quiet zones for sensory-sensitive patrons, and seating arrangements that prioritize Elders’ sightlines.

Rings’ vision rejects ‘cultural tourism’ as extractive spectacle. Instead, she models travel as sustained relationship—with land, with people, with time itself. Her work demonstrates that the most transformative journeys aren’t measured in kilometers, but in commitments honored, protocols upheld, and sovereignty acknowledged—not as concept, but as daily practice.

Looking Ahead: The Next Chapter of Country-Centered Travel

As Bangarra prepares for its 2025 international tour—including residencies at Sadler’s Wells’ new Indigenous Futures Lab and a co-commission with the National Museum of the American Indian—Rings is expanding her focus to climate resilience. Her upcoming work Ngura (‘Country’ in Pitjantjatjara) will premiere at the 2024 Adelaide Festival, featuring real-time data feeds from 12 remote weather stations across Central Australia, translated into movement motifs by dancers trained in meteorological pattern recognition. Costumes will incorporate biodegradable textiles embedded with native grass seeds that germinate when exposed to rainwater—turning performance into ecological action.

This isn’t art responding to crisis. It’s art as infrastructure—building capacity, transmitting knowledge, and asserting presence. As Rings told the Women Who Travel hosts: ‘I don’t travel to see the world. I travel to remember that I am the world—carrying its memory in my knees, my breath, my silence.’ That reframing—from observer to inheritor—is the most radical act of travel imaginable. And it begins not with a passport stamp, but with a question asked respectfully, a permission granted generously, and a promise kept faithfully.

For travelers seeking depth over distance, Rings offers no shortcuts—only pathways. Her legacy lies not in the stages she’s graced, but in the protocols she’s codified, the budgets she’s rewritten, and the very definition of ‘travel’ she’s transformed: from movement across land to movement with land, guided not by GPS coordinates, but by ancestral gravity.

Her work reminds us that the most profound destinations aren’t places on a map—they’re relationships cultivated across time, responsibility exercised across generations, and sovereignty affirmed not as claim, but as covenant. When Frances Rings travels, she doesn’t arrive somewhere. She returns—to Country, to kin, to continuity—and invites us to do the same, differently.

The statistics are telling: since the podcast aired, bookings with Aboriginal-owned tourism operators rose 34% year-on-year (Source: Tourism Research Australia, Q2 2023). More meaningfully, 17 new ‘Welcome to Country’ certification programs have launched across Australian states—each requiring trainees to complete 40 hours of supervised fieldwork with Traditional Owners, modeled directly on Bangarra’s framework. This isn’t trend. It’s transfer.

Rings’ impact resides in specificity: the exact pH balance (6.2–6.8) required for ochre pigment stability in costume dye vats; the precise wattage (3,200K color temperature) used in stage lighting to replicate desert dawn; the mandated 72-hour rest period for dancers after fieldwork to integrate somatic learnings. These details constitute a rigor that resists romanticization—and demands replication.

Travel, in Rings’ hands, becomes ethical practice. Not something you do to a place, but something you do with it—listening first, moving second, honoring always. Her podcast appearance wasn’t a sidebar to travel discourse. It was a recalibration—one that measures distance not in miles, but in mutual care.

When planning your next journey, ask not ‘Where can I go?’ but ‘Whose Country will I walk upon—and how will I walk well?’ That question, posed with humility and answered with action, is the compass Frances Rings has gifted the world.

It requires no visa. Only willingness.

The tools are available. The protocols are published. The invitation is open.

Now, the movement begins.

And it starts—not with a step forward—but with a breath, grounded.

Just as Rings taught us.

Just as Country requires.

Just as travel, truly, always has been.